ABSTRACT
This chapter describes author's role and the potential the position holds for promoting innovation, facilitating desired changes, and enabling administrators to engage with others in reflection on programs and practices and the continuous learning about how to improve practice. They read several earlier studies of the deanship, learning that meeting often-conflicting demands of the job and balancing personal and professional commitments were continuing themes across many studies. The deans' jobs primarily entailed using resources to maintain effective daily operations; recruiting, selecting, and monitoring department administrators and faculty, promoting internal productivity, engaging in scholarship, delegating to and coordinating with others and maintaining external and political relationships with a wide array of constituencies. Teacher education in the United States is increasingly being controlled by policies that, in author's view, position teachers and teacher educators as workers who must be monitored through results on standardized tests or performance criteria of their students and their students.
